Facebook Democratizing its Terms of Use

Posted 02/27/2009 at 12:15pm | by Paul Lilly

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Angry public discourse reared its ugly head recently when Facebook appeared to try and pull a fast one by amending its Terms of Use contract to grant the social networking site never-ending rights to user-uploaded content. Following a public backlash and negative media attention, the site promptly pulled an about-face and rescined the new terms.

Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the privacy change during a press conference earlier this week, during which time he outlined a new, community driven plan in which any controversial changes will be put to a user vote.

"Last week, we put up old terms after we put up new terms," Zuckerberg said. "We took last week as a strong signal of how much people cared about Facebook and how much they want to govern it. We're happy to roll out these polices today."

To aid with the process, Zuckerberg said Facebook will form a "user council" in which it would "invite the authors of the most insightful and constructive comments on the draft documents to serve as founding members of the group."

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